A modern Sally Homemaker with a dash of crazy… well maybe more than a dash

Tag Archives: Pasta

As a tradition I always cook for my Mom for every special occasion. Christmas, her Birthday, Mother’s day, I always cook her dinner. It’s a tradition I stared when I started college and shortly after I moved out when I had no money and no idea what to buy her. When I was younger I would buy her stuff for the kitchen, but she didn’t use any of it much. Except for wooden spoons, for some reason we’re both always in need of more wooden spoons.

So, back to what’s important the food. While I tend to gravitate towards Asian food, the spicer the better, my Mom prefers pasta, the Olive Garden is one of her favorite restaurants. So pasta it was.

I decided to make a mild sauce pasta, my Mom prefers tomato based pasta’s and I prefer cheese based, so I compromised with wine. I had to eat it too. The side would be Bruchetta, who doesn’t like Bruchetta, and a desert of chocolate pie.

Happy Mother’s Day. I love you Mom.

P.s. For a vegetarian option exchange the chicken breasts for 1 lb of mushrooms.

Ingredients

2 chicken breasts

2 tablespoons butter

1 onion

2 tablespoons capers

½ cup white wine

2 cups whipping cream

1 box pasta

Salt

Pepper

I used penne, it’s my favorite kind of pasta, but you could easily substitute a different Italian pasta(not egg or udon noodles)

Trim any fat off of the chicken and cut it into approximately 1 inch pieces.

Melt the butter in a skillet under medium heat. Once butter has melted add the chicken pieces and season with salt and pepper in the skillet. This will season the butter as well which is going to be used in the next step.

Cook until the chicken is no longer pink in the center. Will take about 10 minutes. If you get impatient, and some of your chicken pieces start to get done, you can cut the bigger pieces in half with a wooden spoon by pressing down in the middle and wiggling the spoon back and forth a little.

While chicken is cooking, finely dice the onion and start making the pasta following the instructions on the box.

Once chicken has cooked completely, take out of the skillet but do not drain the skillet. Add the onion and capers to the skillet where you cooked the chicken. If some of the juice the capers are stored in get into the dish as well, don’t worry about it, it’s additional seasoning. Cook on medium to high heat for about 1 minute or until the onions start to soften, the onions will turn brown from the chicken drippings. Add the wine and turn the heat back down to medium. Cook, stirring occasionally until the wine reduces by half. Should take about 5 minutes.

Add the cream and cook, stirring occasionally, until the cream has thickened. To tell when the cream has thickened, stir immediately after addition and note how much resistance there is, should be similar to stirring milk. When the cream has thickened there will be a little bit of resistance and cream will not slosh in the pan as much. Should take about 10 minutes.

Drain the pasta and return it to the pot you cooked it in. After the cream has thickened pour it on top of the pasta and add the chicken. Stir to evenly mix.

If your pasta sauce is not as thick as you would like it, you can continue to cook the pasta after it’s all in one dish, stirring frequently to avoid the pasta burning on the bottom. Be very careful about this though, because your chicken will very quickly start to dry out.